Tag Archive: Muslim

I recently received a comment from Ali Naqash on a blog that I wrote a while back called Can Democracy and Islam Coexist? It’s stupidity is mind-blowing. I really don’t know where to start in the criticism of this comment. Without question, it deserves the title of “The Dumbest Comment”. Here it is, enjoy:

“Democracy is not the way of forward, since it gives no right to women like they deserve to be given. It treats them like waste. But it is only through morality and justice as in Islam that one can expect women to be treated like Queens. This article proves that Muslims are sick and tired of people like you trying to FORCE democracy on us! We DONT want your democracy. Thank you. We would be much happier without it.”

After the recent Boston Bombings, I had some discussions with a fellow blogger named sarsourraaa. I suggested that considering the number of ordinary moderate Muslims who are so quickly being turned into extremists, perhaps the Muslim community should start taking a long hard look at their community. The reason being that Muslims are humans, and all humans are capable of being persuaded into evil acts given the right conditions. The large number of suicide bombings that we have seen in the past decade by Muslims would seem to indicate that there is something about the contemporary Muslim faith that is provoking such behavior.

Of course, this observation was met with claims that I am “ignorant” and “uneducated” (Surprisingly, I don’t think I was called ‘racist’, which is a common go-to slander by people who are unwilling to be self-critical. So, I commend her for that.).

Ironically, much to sarsourraaa’s chagrin, I found an excellent article written by Muslim journalist Asra Quratulain Nomani, that echoes my sentiments!

So, will sarsourraaa come over to my side or will she abandon her tribe member?

For all Muslims living in Western countries who think that they are being persecuted because their brethren are carrying out terrorist attacks, you clearly don’t understand what it means to be persecuted. Actually, the reverse is much more true. Christians (and obviously Jews) are genuinely persecuted in Muslim countries Although I am not a Christian or a Jew, I sympathize with any group which is persecuted.

Meeting a random American who snubs you because you are Muslim (especially immediately after an Islamic terrorist attack) is not persecution. Sorry. You don’t get to elevate that experience to persecution or else you diminish the meaning of the word “persecute”.

Now, where’s my evidence? I will make way for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and let you read for yourself. Ironically, Muslims often complain about how their plight is not discussed in the media enough. Yet, the plight of Christians in Muslim countries is little known to the vast majority of people. Here is the article:

Well, I’d have to say, it could be, depending on the circumstances. If a police officer refers to me as a white male, that’s definitely not racist. However, I had a conversation with a silly blogger, zero1ghost, who attacked me by asking, “could you sound any more white?” Some might try to argue that this isn’t a slander. Well, then I would ask those people, how could you answer that question assuming it wasn’t a slander? “Oh, no, I could not sound more white.” or how about, “Oh, if you’d like, I could try to sound more white.” No. Neither of these are possible. In fact, this question is not a question at all, but a direct insult. What’s more, is it’s a racist insult, but it doesn’t seem quite so bad because it uses “white” instead of any other race. Well, this is all childish. Racism is racism. I have no need to say to someone, “what you just said is so black.” It doesn’t even make any sense to say someone sounds like an entire race. What’s more, why should someone be embarrassed about “sounding” like their race? If I told Snoop Dogg, “you sound so black,” should he take offense to this? Of course not, this is ridiculous.

I have included below our exchange. I didn’t include the original post he made that I referenced because it talked about other things that weren’t pertinent to this discussion.

And, yes, I simply took the “you sound so white” comment to be just an insult, and responded accordingly — ie., not answering his question respectfully 🙂 .

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” It’s the Enlightened, white west trying to impose it’s will on other parts of the world which has little to know [sic] understanding of the culture of the area before-hand [sic].”

So, it seems to have become a slander to refer to people as “enlightened” (this is actually a good thing), “white” (this is racism) and “west” or “western” (this is tribalism). I see this more and more these days. If someone falls into any of these categories, their opinions are automatically worthless in a discussion on world politics. This is childishness. So, can we only trust an “unenlightened” “non-white” (whatever that even means) “non-western” (whatever that really means) person to talk about world affairs?

The irony is that the people who throw out these statements (like you) are trying REALLY HARD to avoid being racist, yet the result is that they transform the world into a world of us verses them, where only “them” is allowed to have an opinion. Ridiculous.

Wow, TGA, could you sound any more white? I mean, I don’t know if you are, but goodness you reek of white priviledge.Yes, you do have to know something about another culture or religion before you blast it. Esp. one far different from your own. There is no “doctrine of Islam” as depending on the branch/style of muslim, it’s understood and carried out differently. The style of Sufi Islam would have no qualms with western style secular democracy. Sunni, less so and definitely not if one is Shi’ite, Wahabi or Salafi. This understanding shows this post for what it is, a pile of crap. But one would have to know something of the multifaceted faith of Islam to actually see this.

I didn’t know that “white” was a slander. Now, before you start crying and saying “I didn’t say white was a slander,” wipe that tear away from you eye and listen. Yes, you did. If you replaced “could you sound any more white” with “could you sound any more black,” everyone would dismiss you as an outright racist. So what’s the difference? Do you think that it’s not racist because white people are superior? Perhaps you have some kind of white-envy. I personally don’t care about skin tone. “Racism is the arrogance of small differences.” So, once you start to view yourself as on a par with white people, maybe you will be able to calm down. What would be worse is if you are white. Then you’re a outright white racist. However, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just a non-white person who envies white people.Oh, and to answer the rest of your statement, all kinds of Islam are based on the Koran. The Koran is a childish book. Therefore, all forms of Islam are childish.

I always thought that the idea of evidence was pretty simple. I also thought that belief in God was not based on evidence, but on faith, since there is no evidence for God. However, in recent conversations with believers, it seems that they have a different view on what constitutes evidence. Without stating specifically what “evidence” is, so as to not stifle any possible comments by believers, I’m curious what evidence believers have for their belief in God.

And, by the way, I’m getting a little tired of people quoting wikipedia or a dictionary when I discuss a topic like this. Yes, I am tech-savvy enough to log on to dictionary.com or wikipedia.org and surf the web (as the youngsters say). I don’t care about dictionary definitions here, I’m interested in what believers naturally believe is evidence for God.

Often during an argument about the validity of evolution, one who doesn’t believe in evolution will assert something along the lines of: “If evolution is true, then how could something as perfect as the human eye be created? The answer, of course, is that were were created perfectly in God’s image; we did not evolve from animals.”

Here, I will admit, is a clever piece of rhetoric, though wrong nonetheless. The reason that it is clever is that it plays to our pride. Who would argue that we humans aren’t perfect? Well, I would.

Consider the human body carefully. Every individual part can not only break down, but can cause the death of the individual! If you can’t imagine how this is possible, let me remind you of the six-letter word “cancer.” Even the most unimportant parts of your body, let’s say a toe, can be stricken by cancer, and you can die. If you don’t believe this, look up the reason for Bob Marley’s death. If you don’t want to spend the time opening this, in short, his religious beliefs dictated that his body must be one, and amputation is not an option. Mr. Marley contracted cancer on a toe, and refused to amputate. The rest is biology.

So, any part of our body can have a problem — one of the manifold problems possible — and that problem can cause a termination of our whole life, not just a problem with that part in particular.

Let’s consider an unarguably intelligently designed device as a comparison: a car. If you were going to buy a car and the dealer told you that if you get a tiny bit of rust on any part of this car, the whole car would eventually be destroyed by this bit of rust, would you want to buy this car? On a car, if you get some rust on your bumper, and you don’t treat the rust, the worst that will happen is that the bumper will eventually rust off — the rest of the car will be fine.

So, a machine that is intelligently designed by a mere human is superior in this fundamental way to a human who was designed by an omnipotent being. Wow, we humans are smarter than God then. That’s nice to know.

Also, you should consider the frequency of problems or injuries among humans. Evolution explains that our ancestors have only been walking upright for a relatively short time, on the evolutionary scale. Accordingly, this drastic shift in positioning of the anatomy should, considering evolution’s short adaptation time, cause numerous problems, probably for at least a few million years. As we might expect, humans have notoriously problematic spines. Spines that had many, many, many millions of years to evolve for horizontal usage are known to cause aches, pain, and even excruciating pain due to disc herniation from normal wear and tear. I know from personal experience how terrible this can be, I’ve had an artificial disc placed in between two cervical vertebrae to solve a disc herniation. If you’re wondering about the pain, it can be almost immobilizing and the pain can occur anywhere the impacted nerve leads to (in my case, down my left arm). Many also lose sensation in their extremities and possibly power. I lost sensation however, I never lost arm strength.

I have heard different percentages, however, it seems that by the time people reach 80, almost everyone will have a mild to severe herniated disc. Considering how debilitating this common injury is, I have no idea how a Creationist would explain this fundamental design problem. Maybe God likes it when we are in intense pain.

So, unless our “Intelligent Designer” is far less intelligent than us humans, it seems that the concept of Intelligent Design should at least be rechristened “A Little Dumb Design”.

I didn’t know Hitchens debated Tariq Ramadan on this subject before I wrote this post. The real irony is that one poster, musingsaudi, who I debated back and forth with on this subject, suggested I read Tariq Ramadan in order to understand this subject better.

What a perfect surprise to see Hitchens spank the same guy on the same subject!

I’m not going to analyze the video for you, but it starts with a great intro by Hitchens, after which Tariq Ramadan immediately denies the claim that Islam is a religion of peace! I’m not kidding. He hedges and says it depends on the reader and it therefore can be a religion of peace or violence! This is in his INTRO! I don’t think I need to dig any deeper into this guy’s analysis of Islam after seeing this video.